To Catch A Fish
by ZLizabeth
Summary: She had snagged his bait, he had thrown his back trying to land her, but she had fought. She was stronger than all the others, though her frame was frail and her features were delicate.
1. Prologue

To Catch A Fish  
Author: ZLizabeth  
  
Summary:  
He only fished the ocean. A therapist would examine the actions behind fishing, but he preferred to just fish. It's about "another character", you'll guess who. It's a bit different, but not so unique I'd call it groundbreaking. Read and Review, please! It's hard to describe!  
  
Disclaimer:  
The characters of Gilmore Girls belong to the WB, Amy Sherman-Palladino, and some other people who I'm too lazy to name. Breezy Point isn't mine either, it belongs to the state of New York. The quote at the beginning is by Ernest Lyons. The title was also ripped off from the Hitchcock film "To Catch A Thief."  
  
Prologue  
  
"The fisherman loves to row out in the stillness of the mists of morning when the lake is like polished black glass."  
  
He only fished on the ocean. He would get up early in the morning and drive to Breezy Point in his battered car. It was a red jeep, with soft leather seats bruised by scenes of passion, and scratches of initials and deep fingernail cuts engraved on the sides, where matted cotton fluff bled out of the faded tan. There were bumps and dents on the dashboard, and the radio spoke in baby tongues, garbling out the harsh jazz that he always listened too. The seat belts were broken, and layers of brown nylon pooled in the cracks of seats. The seats sagged, leather breaking from the rain and weather that had filtered in to harden them combined with the weight of tackle, rods and waders. The doors wouldn't lock, and the windows were broken. He would drive along the deserted highways until the smell of salt was as concentrated as his grandfather's margaritas, and then he would stop.  
  
Some days it would be raining. Some days it wouldn't. He fished no matter what the conditions were, because fishing was all he had. He didn't fish as a sport, he fished because he liked to fish. He didn't bring nets, or depth-testers, or any fancy gadgets like that. He fished with a rod and a half empty tackle box. He would park his car close to the beach and walk out with his gear tucked under one arm, the other arm pulling his wind breaker closer around his body. The wind would be strong no matter what day, season or year it was. It would whip at his hair - not that there was much of it anymore. He had been forced to shave his head close when he was seventeen, and old habits die hard.  
  
Breezy Point didn't vary much. It was always cold, and fishing was never easy. When he got to the wet brown sand, he would walk across it slowly. He took off his shoes at his car door and tossed them carelessly under the seat. Walking on the silt, his feet would sink in slowly, and the mud-sand grabbed at his feet and held on to his heels and instep, so that he always felt sticky when he took another step. The New York State Parks and Beaches Conservation Society had not forgotten Breezy Point completely, but the beach was always empty save the regulars, and no teams of workers dressed in forest green ever came to clean up the place with trash bags. Old glass bottles from the beer drinkers who would lean on their cars and swig alcohol were shattered and scattered underneath the top layer of sand. Plastic bags stuck to the beach and made scratching moans when the wind stirred the sand inside them. All sorts of shit from the ocean had gathered here and there. Cracked seashells were everywhere. It was illegal to walk on the beach without shoes, and he knew it. But it didn't matter to him. When the glass or seashells cut into his foot, and pierced his skin hard enough to make it bleed, he would be numb to the pain and walk on into the water, where the salt would clean his cut. His feet were hard and calloused, though, and usually deep wounds were avoided.   
  
He would wade in until the water lapped at his waist. The rubbery pants were too big for him, allowing water to seep in and make his clothes stick to the waders. He didn't mind the cold. He liked feeling the water so close to him. His body went numb, but he still could feel the alive touch of water on him. He would stand still in the water for a minute, and exchange pleasantries with another man if he spotted him, or watch the horizon.  
  
He would start up again as quickly as he had stopped, and he would be flipping back the reel and finding the right place to put his finger on the rod. He tested his balance with his first few casts, and dragged the lure through the waves to feel the current, the depth, the life. He might find a nip on the line if he was lucky, but usually, he just waited for a while until he was ready to fish.  
  
When he was going to fish, he straightened his back and watched every flicker of his rod. He flicked his wrist when he cast, and he would watch the sea with blue eyes. He was patient. He waited a long time for a bite. If it never came, he reeled in and cast again. He had been taught patience.   
  
He usually caught a fish or two. He would reel it in, and his eyes would smile when he saw it. He would run a finger down it's scales and, if he had company, yell an insult to the other fisherman, bragging of his catch. Usually his fish were nothing to brag about. The only fisherman to come here were weathered experts who had stories to tell and things to brag about. Sharks when they were in Columbia, or eels on the shores of Vermont when they were just three. Their fathers had taught them to fish. He would listen to their stories leaning on his jeep, wrapping a bit of extra line around his finger and nodding and laughing along with them. He knew little about these men. He had learned a little about them from their beards and reoccurrances at Breezy Point. Some of them would speak fondly of their daughters, some of them would complain about their wives while others boasted of their sex lives and there were even those who beamed with pride speaking of their girlfriends.   
"Women," he had remarked to a crowd of three men, "wouldn't be proud of their publicity here."  
"He speaks the truth!" a hearty red-faced man had yelled, "if my Caitlin knew of the stories I've told of her babyhood, she'd pout in the corner of her room."  
"We only talk 'cause we love 'em," a clean-shaven Jack said wisely, "I love that bitch at home, even though she can't get it through her head that fishin' isn't an excuse to go sleep with a blonde slut from work."  
He would nod, smile, and think about his girls. All of them.  
  
At 7:00, after about three hours of fishing, he would reel in and slip a hook from his lure into the line, and walk back across the beach to the car. When he got to the jeep, he would throw open the door and sit on the edge of the seat, bringing the towel from the floor to slap his feet. He got most of the sand off, and tossed the towel in the back where it wouldn't get the rest of the Jeep dirty. Just out of habit, because his car was dirty already. He would peel off his waders and drape them over the back seat, then rolled down the windows and put his sopping jeans next to them where air could dry them off. He would find another towel on the floor and dry off his legs, then put on another pair of identical jeans. Lastly he would slam the door shut, and it wouldn't close. He would open it and close it again, then back up, away from the beach, and drive back through New York State as it woke up.  
  
*Comments, critisism, complaints, and any sort of review in general would be appreciated. Too short, edited badly, anything! 


	2. Chapter One

To Catch A Fish  
By ZLizabeth  
  
Disclaimer: Ditto to the first one and this time the quotes are by Charles Bradford and Thomas Fuller.  
  
Author's Note: Many people are confused as to who the hell I'm talking about. The last chapter was unclear, and it should soon be obvious. I hope.  
  
Chapter One  
  
"My advice is to go often and visit many localities. Kill no more fish than you require for your own eating, and do that in the most scientific manner."  
  
"Be content. The sea hath fish enough."  
  
His windows were rolled down, even though it was raining. He glanced out the side every now and then. Girls had told him that he should get all the cracks in the glass fixed - it couldn't cost much. His old habit of smile and nod and silently dismissing came up there. He liked looking through the world without the veil of musty glass, and he liked the cracks that let him breath real air without having to crank down the windows.   
  
He had grown lazy. He wouldn't get the seats fixed, or the dashboard buffed, or the peeling red repainted. He couldn't even put up the windows on a rainy morning after they were left open last night. He felt the cold drops of sky on his skin and rubbed a hand across his arm to get rid of the goose bumps. He adjusted to driving with one hand, draping his right arm across the back of his seat. He used to drive like this in his Porsche. But he liked the jeep better than the Porsche.   
  
A siren wailed behind him. He obediently pulled over and stuck his head out of the window to see a cop in a heavy black raincoat advancing towards him. She sloshed through the puddles of highway and reached him, her hat dropping down over her eyes.  
  
"You're passing the speed limit, sir."  
  
"Sorry," he said casually, not looking at the female. Some habits stuck around. He always could make them work for what they wanted.  
  
"Who should I make this ticket out to?"  
  
"Me, I suppose?"  
  
Above them, a train roared across old steel tracks, and children breathing patterns on the window in their sleep fogged over the image of a man and a woman on an empty highway. It drowned out the noise of morning for two minutes as it bumped across the road.  
  
"Thank you for your cooperation," she acknowledged, pushing her hat back above her bangs. She had bangs. Who else had he known with bangs?  
  
"Anytime."  
  
He watched her go. Her car passed him quickly, and he lagged behind to watch the lights go out ahead of him. He looked at his mirror, and dropped his arm back to the steering wheel. He sped up, going faster than he had before, then slowed to the 60 MPH limit. The jeep couldn't go as fast as the Porsche had.   
  
The rain had begun to pool in a small dent of leather. He threw a towel onto the puddle and concentrated on the road. He had driven this way so many times that he could do it with his eyes closed. The first time he had gone this way was when his grandfather could still fit him in his lap. His grandfather's hands had never frightened him as the hands of other old people had, spotted and veined. His hands fit under his grandfather's on the worn steering wheel, and his grandfather would tell the boy that his little grandson was the one driving, and he was only helping because he knew the way.  
  
His grandfather had taught him how to drive. And how to live.   
  
His grandfather had only tolerated - not encouraged - his excessive use of women.  
  
"You're fickle," the old man would say, "a girl ain't half as satisfying as twenty two pounds of striped bass."  
  
He would disagree with that, "anyway, it's the same strategies throughout," was his only counter. His grandfather would shake his head and go back into his book. He would mumble out little things that never managed to shake their way into his grandson's head.  
  
"We cast differently. I only kill the fish I want to eat."  
  
The old man wasn't alive now. He had hated Breezy Point, because the fish there were too smart for him. He wasn't some old game fisherman, he would say, and he'd be damned if the Einstein fishy family was going to tease him with tiny nips on the line.  
  
His grandson now fished only Breezy Point. He liked challenge. He had grown used to losing, though he did not think of it as losing anymore. He liked to think that he was playing a game with the fish, and that if they won, he could be a good sport about it. One of the aspects of fishing he enjoyed was that it was one game you couldn't cheat at. That used to enrage him, and he would always stalk away from his grandfather after seven or so fishless casts. His grandfather would chuckle and keep fishing while he watched in jealousy from the car, the arc of the old arms swings to throw the rod out towards the horizon.  
  
Somewhere along the line, he had learned.  
  
***Once again, reviews are greatly appreciated 


	3. Chapter Two

To Catch A Fish  
ZLizabeth  
Chapter Two  
  
Thank you A.J. McClane for the quote.  
  
"A thousand fishing trips go by, indistinguishable from one other, until one comes along that is fatefully perfect."  
  
A thousand jagged rocks stuck out from the shoreline of Breezy Point. To get to the choicest fishing locations, he had to stride across the rocks. When he was younger, he had often slipped and cursed aloud the damned journey. Wedged in between two massive black structures, he clawed at them to get up, and kicked fruitlessly at the grey sand.  
He was taller, slimmer, stronger, now. He leapt easily across them, and the routine felt as normal as it had running around the track of the gym. He didn't explore them anymore. He was afraid of falling. He had accomplished grace, and he wouldn't fail himself.  
He never sat while fishing. Even when he paddled out into the shallowest and gentlest waters in his Betsy, he stood while casting. Sometimes while lounging against the rocks, going through the effortless actions of fishing, he would think back to where his phobias orginated.   
He would scan through fishing trips, the ones that he remembered. The ones with his grandfather, the ones that he took by himself, alone and terrified that he would do something wrong without the instruction of his teacher. The trip that he had taken after the death of his grandfather.  
The world of fishing revolved around his grandfather. He would shake off the merry-go-round of montagues and smile, casting again. Then the fish would dissolve into girls and he would think back. Back to times that seemed anicent and alien.  
The conquests, the missions, the overruling. The worshipping blue eyes, the silken blonde hair.   
He didn't remember names very easily. The other fishermen often ridiculed his lack of memory. They guffawed at the absense or unorginality of names in his lovemaking epics. The Seduction of Mary, the Wooing of Whatshername.  
There were some names he remembered.   
Two universes, two suns. The spun in different directions in such perfect parralels to each other.   
  
He liked the concept of fate. He never believed in destiny and co., but he liked to think about them while staring at the back of her head during class. He never applied fate to the real world.  
He did think of fate in fishing.  
When he happened to get lost in the twists of that lake in Canada, only to land the biggest fish he had ever seen outside of the stuffed one on his mothers wall.   
When the rain forced him to turn this way and pratically bump into that beautiful bass just hugging the shoreline.  
He didn't anymore. Fishing had become the reality that he dreamed about.  
  
***Reviews will make me happy. 


	4. Chapter Three

To Catch A Fish  
By ZLizabeth  
  
Disclaimer: Quote is by Willard Spencer.  
  
"The biggest fish I ever caught was the one that got away."  
  
There was something about standing in shallow water that made things come back to him. The hands of the sea lapping at his ankles stirred up memories. Old memories. Memories that he knew existed, but always forgot about.  
There was something about the dull green sea, and the tiny shards of rock and shell that pinched his feet, that made him nostalgic for the Barbados. He liked it there. He liked crystal, and he liked white sand, and he liked the smell of salt and coconuts at the beach. He always knew that if he ever were to fall in love, the girl he loved would be a vision. Not just pretty, but garbed in white. The pure white of the sand, or the dulled white of the houses that lined the shore. She would smell like coconuts, and her kisses would be salty.   
He never had fallen in love. He came close to it, once or twice, but he had never found the perfect girl. He would have been cuffed on the head had he confessed his inaccessible lust for perfection. And what kind of idiot with any sense would buy a crystal ring for his girl? Diamonds were forever. He had settled on girls that were far from right, because he knew that a girl made of Coconuts didn't exist.   
  
The other regulars at Breezy Point had visions of perfection, too. The single and animal knew the details of her body down to circumference of her fingers. The romantic would take hours to describe her eyes, the smell of the shampoo that lived in her shower. The engaged always pretended that they had found perfection. Some of them had. Those whose eyes clouded over when they spoke of her had found it. The ones that could still tell you what color her hair was while swigging beer had settled for something that fell below their desire. The taste of alcohol held vividness for every man, and the ones who could taste it while they sampled love still had room left for an unquenched need.   
He would listen until their tongues went dry. They had advice for him. The starstruck would always tell him to wait. Biding time was worth it. The sensible told him that they had found their love by holding on and not letting her slip away. He listened to both and said he understood. The married who had found the flawless could crow about the goddamn nags, or they could say that having a soulmate with a ring on her finger was bliss.   
He was a friend to all of them. He had stories, too. He could tell them whatever they wanted to hear. He had told some more than others, and they would ask to hear things over and over again. There were only two genres they would hear, though. Fish and women.   
He didn't separate them. Fishing had become his replacement. He would tell them how he seduced a girl on the table of a closed café. They would hoot and laugh and tease him. He would tell them about the time he had a thirty-two pounder alongside him when it nicked his line and got away with his best lure. They would curse his line, tell him about the victories they'd had, the strategies. Nothing could launch memories like the story of a lost fish. They all had stories about the time they had Old Mike of Wilson's Lake at their fingertips, only to lose him.  
One thing all fishermen share is the common knowledge that the biggest fish you'll ever catch will be the one that gets away.  
  
***I will not beg for reviews. I have my pride. 


	5. Chapter Four

To Catch a Fish  
By ZLizabeth  
Chapter Four  
  
Disclaimer: There is one thing in this story that I don't own. I refer to it using only a pronoun. The quote is an old proverb.  
  
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."  
  
There were days when he felt sixteen again. Days when he whimpered at awaking at some ungodly hour, the confines of his routine forcing his tired body into life. There were days when he moaned into the running water he splashed onto his face, mumbling softly to himself as he fell into he elevator and groped for his keys.   
He kept his jeep in an overpriced lot two blocks from his apartment. One foot after another, he would stumble down the dormant streets, slapping at his face to wake himself up. From the booth where the small, fast speaking man who kept the lot was sleeping would be the glow of his latent cigarette. It would spark and burn while he pulled out, and when he returned it would be dead, a new trail of smoke foaming from the old man's mouth.  
Options were nonexistent. He didn't have choices in going fishing. The dawn hours were his religion, the only part of his life he had any faith in. He coaxed the Jeep off the frozen parking lot with the prayers of someone at mass, stroking the breaks, while it rolled backwards towards the ocean. His breath appeared in clouds in the atmosphere like the incense of a church. A morning spent wrapped in one of his mother Egyptian cotton sheets would have a been a betrayal to his belief system.   
Egyptian cotton was sacrilegious. Anything that reminded him of his father or mother made him sick. But he always was too tired to get new sheets. The sheets, some wine glasses, and a table were all that reminded him of his parents, save a large percent of the money in his bank account. He had lost his pride four years ago. The steady flow of checks given without the stain of disapproving looks from his family were not torn. They were smoothly passed from between his long fingers into the bank. It was those checks that he lived off. He didn't care for people who couldn't accept gifts.   
His jeep embodied all the remnants of his morning rituals. The dashboard was littered with cracked coffee lids and the scent of bitter caffeine balanced the concentration of dried sea salt. His fishing tackle was piled clumsily in the back seat. A note reading "93.5" was taped to the knob on his radio, a pointless reminder for his perfectly functional memory. He was waiting for the day when he forgot what he had for breakfast that morning, forgot how old he was, and needed a reminder. He felt old enough to experience such a loss. It was a loss he wouldn't have minded.  
His only other elixir was his obsession with chewing up and spitting out girls, and he considered this only a hobby. One of the few things the abrupt change in his lifestyle had failed to disable.  
Random hairs could been seen when the sun, rising as he drove back, highlighted the seats. They were usually blindingly bright. One might mistake them for his own hairs, but the long ones were the reminders of his many blonde friends.  
He had once known a girl who had told him, with her goodwill smile, that he could do something with his life. After all, he was rich, smart, and...  
This was where he had readily supplied the "handsome".   
He had thought he was in love with that girl. The first girl he had ever fallen in love with.  
And one of the few he had failed to reel in. She had snagged his bait, he had thrown his back trying to land her, but she had fought. She was stronger than all the others, though her frame was frail and her features were delicate. He had her swimming next to him until she bit through the line, leaving him poorer a heart and a lure.  
When he was fishing, he would dream. He would dream about love. He would dream about dreaming about some starstruck beauty in his ear, the wind whipping at her perfect hair. Floating above the water in his arms, her feet dipping into the ocean. He liked to dream that love like that was still possible.  
An unreal sort of love. It had taken him twenty years to establish his only authentic love, the only love he could accept.   
That love, of course, was the ocean. The reality of salt and water and fish. The ocean who played hard to get, who was as passionate, as furious, as unpredictable and three dimensional as any woman he had ever touched his mouth to. The ocean was as thrilling and as dangerous as the kind of love he had been hammered to believe in.   
Love had never proven itself to fulfill him. The love, given or withheld, from the three woman who made his throat feel parched had been agonizing and torturous. Promises and lies interchangeable in his twisted devotions.   
But he didn't expect the ocean to make promises.  
  
******did you like? I'm sorry about the infrequent updates. Like my character (Disclaimer: who isn't mine) I'm very lazy, very tired... 


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